Sterling-Silver: Longtime Bully Toppled By Skinny New Guy

April 30, 2014|Jeff Jacobs

Adam Silver answered the weight of sports history with the required precision of an accomplished lawyer and the inspired vision of a proud American. The NBA commissioner picked up that great weight of history high overhead Tuesday and dropped it on Donald Sterling harder than one of Blake Griffin's monster dunks.

Buttressed by overwhelming support from his players and his owners — also sparing them, by and large, the dirty task of explaining why Sterling has been able to operate among them for nearly 33 years — Silver banned the Los Angeles Clippers owner for life, fined him the league maximum $2.5 million and barred him from all NBA activities. Silver then announced that he will immediately get to work and do everything in his power to force the octogenarian racist to sell his team.

"I fully expect to get the support I need," Silver said.

Silver will need 75 percent approval from the board of governors to remove Sterling, but his message sent on an unforgettable afternoon was 100 percent loud and clear.

There is no room in a civilized land for a plantation owner's mentality.

There is no room in a sport, where meritocracy rules, for the vile words of a boss man.

Only 88 days on the job, Silver was concise. He was precise. As nervous as he must have been, he was equally powerful and sure. He led. He used words like "personal outrage" and being "personally distraught" over Sterling's words. He apologized to the pioneers of the game, men like Earl Lloyd, Chuck Cooper, Sweetwater Clifton, Bill Russell and especially Magic Johnson.

In a private conversation with his girlfriend V. Stiviano (real name, Maria Vanessa Perez), Sterling (real name, Donald Tokowitz) scolded her for posing with Johnson and other blacks on Instagram.

"You can sleep with them," Sterling said. "You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it … and not to bring them to my games."

As repugnant as those words are, it is when Stiviano, who is of mixed African American and Mexican heritage, points out that most of the players on his team are black that Sterling demonstrates his true colors. White supremacy has a dark heart.

"I support them and give them food and clothes and cars and houses," said Sterling, whose voice on the recordings was confirmed by Silver. "Who gives it to them? Does someone else give it to them? Who makes the game? Do I make the game or do they make the game? Is there 30 owners that created the league?"

Silver had his answer ready.

Master Donald.

Get lost.

Now we're going to find out if he can make it stick. After buying the Clippers for $12 million, Sterling could sell the Clippers for, what, $700 million to $1 billion? He can laugh all the way to the bank. Or he can take this to court if he chooses. What he cannot do is buy decency. What he cannot do is buy respect. He is condemned by his own words.

Should we be concerned that private conversations made public to the likes of TMZ and Deadspin could be used to take down anybody? Absolutely. Using pillow talk as a final judgment of NBA ownership is a slippery slope of feathers and foam rubber. Yet this is also a man with a long trail as a racist slumlord, of discrimination, and by the time you have listened to 15 minutes of Sterling, could any thinking person argue that his message was not abundantly clear?

How could Sterling continue to operate in the NBA at this point without the players walking off the job? NBPA Vice President Roger Mason, in fact, said that union leaders had talked to the NBA and "made it clear the players were ready to boycott" if a mandate calling for Sterling's sale hadn't been made.

"Whether or not [Sterling's] remarks were initially shared in private," Silver said, "they are now public and they represent his views."

"In meting out the punishment we did not take into account his past behavior. When the board ultimately considers his overall fitness to be an owner in the NBA they will take into account all lifetime behavior."

So, yes, Silver came down harder on Sterling than one of Blake Griffin's dunks. Maybe you like the metaphor. Maybe you don't. I love it. Griffin's dad is black. Griffin's mom is white. He is a star on Sterling's Clippers. There is an awful lot of America in one body. Griffin is all of us. And if whites and blacks, if we don't share equally in the outrage and the possibilities to grow from this, then Silver's mighty hammer will have found no nail of justice.

In trying to justify himself at one point with Stiviano, Sterling said it wasn't up to him to change the culture of racism. He went on a riff on how black Jews are treated badly in Israel. History was too much, he said. The world is too overwhelming.